Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryan Stevens.
Hi Ryan, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Real Home Pix started after a lunch with my dad after my first year working as a realtor. I got my Real Estate license straight out of high school; I knew I didn’t want to go to college and real estate seemed like a great opportunity. I enjoyed my first year, but I was looking for ways to supplement my income between commissions as an 18-year-old. One day my dad and I sat down for lunch to talk about some business ideas. He is also a very successful entrepreneur. He founded the Dallas Comic Con, Galactic Gallery in Flower Mound, and has been a licensee of LucasFilm for as long as I can remember.
I can’t remember how it came up at lunch, but shooting listing photos for agents in my office seemed like a good part-time gig to help pay some bills. My dad had some basic photography equipment that he let me borrow, so I started practicing on our house.
My parents were in the process of building their dream home after selling his company in 2013 and the builder had a gorgeous model home right across the street from their build site. I got to know the builder and he was looking for someone to help with photos of their homes so I offered to shoot the model across the street for free. He ended up really liking the photos and I started shooting all of their homes. After a while, I had a decent portfolio and decided to officially present my business to other Realtors in my Flower Mound Ebby Halliday office. Not long after that, I was shooting listings for many of the agents there.
I’m honestly a little surprised anyone hired me to shoot their listings at the time! I’ve learned a lot, and have come a long way since then. To this day, we still shoot for just about that entire Ebby Halliday office and I can’t thank the agents there enough for giving me a chance back then.
From 2013-2019 Real Home Pix was very much just a part-time thing, and I had never ventured out to shoot for any agents outside of that Ebby office. 2019 had been my best real estate sales year ever, but I didn’t feel like it was really for me. I had just gotten engaged to my amazing wife Brie and she was working in HR at Buc-ee’s in Denton. She wasn’t happy at her job either so we decided after we got married in Oct. 2019, we would quit our jobs and go full time with Real Home Pix in 2020.
Obviously, with the pandemic, we weren’t really sure how our plans would be impacted. Thankfully, real estate services were considered “essential” and we were able to push through and have a year that was better than we could’ve possibly expected. We got so busy that we ended up having to hire a full-time editor to our staff so my wife could focus on scheduling clients.
Fast forward to 2022 and we now have a team of 6, and we are growing fast! In another month we expect to have an additional photographer and a fourth later this year.
I always had plans to scale Real Home Pix, I just hadn’t expected us to grow at the rate that we have. My goal isn’t to necessarily become the largest real estate media vendor in DFW though. I know Realtors appreciate working with small businesses. It allows us to hyper-focus on customer service and to ensure that the customer experience is the best in the business. We want our clients to see us as more of a true member of their real estate team, and we do that by assuring that we reflect our clients and their brand in the best light possible. As you get bigger and bigger, it can be very difficult to achieve that consistently.
If you’re a realtor and want to work with a media vendor that truly wants to work with you and help you succeed, Real Home Pix is a media vendor that would love to help.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
So far, very smooth. Even with COVID it didn’t really seem to slow us down at all. The only downturn we have ever faced was last year’s Snowmagedon that brought the entire DFW area to a halt.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
We specialize in providing top-tier real estate media to help market properties for sale all across the DFW area. We offer high-quality photos, videos, 3D tours, aerial imagery, floorplans, and many other services to help agents not only sell their listings but to win more listings by presenting potential home sellers with required media to create an effective marketing package.
We offer incredible value in our services be including things like same-day delivery for free, I believe we are the first real estate media vendor to achieve this consistently every single day.
Additionally, we will photoshop a pretty blue sky in on overcast days, and bring dead grass back to life for colorful and vibrant photos on every listing that we shoot.
Lastly, we have policies in place to help our clients, not penalize them. We know real estate can be complicated, and schedules change all the time because the cleaners didn’t show up, the carpet guy didn’t finish, or the seller’s kid got sick and they didn’t have time to declutter the house.
We don’t charge our clients to reschedule or even cancel a photoshoot, I know first-hand it often isn’t the agent’s fault, and we would rather not pour salt on a wound by charging expensive fees just to move their shoot back a day. How would that help our client?
We also provide our agents with full lifetime usage rights to the media that we shoot for them. There’s no need to purchase additional rights to use photos for marketing after your listing sells.
Again, this is all because we want to work WITH our clients, not against them.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I’m not sure we’ve encountered much luck, good or bad! I know God has blessed us with incredible people that work incredibly hard to push our company forward.
Pricing:
- “Standard Package” – 40 photos, 2 drone photos, Zillow 3D Home Tour – $219
- 40 Photos with 2 Drone Photos – $159
- 1min Video Tour – $99
- Social Media Reel – $29
- Matterport 3D Tour – $149
Contact Info:
- Email: admin@realhomepix.com
- Website: www.realhomepix.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realhomepix/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/realhomepix
Image Credits
Real Home Pix
